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The First Commandment
I am the Lord, your God. You shall not have strange gods before me.
As Christians, we worship the one true God – Father, Son and Holy
Spirit. The very thought of “worshipping” another god seems quite foreign.
The Catechism number 2086 says “When we say ‘God’ we confess
a constant, unchangeable being, always the same, faithful and just, without
any evil.” But can we actually have other “gods” in our lives? An
examination of conscience is always in order.
The Catechism warns of things impeding our worship of God alone: superstition,
idolatry, divination and magic, irreligion – tempting God, in
words or deeds, sacrilege and simony (the buying or selling of spiritual
things) – atheism and agnosticism, even addictions. We must always
guard against all these things to any degree or on any level.
Included in the First Commandment is what many Protestants consider
the Second Commandment, “You shall not make for yourself a graven
image.” The Catechism number 2132 puts it this way: “The Christian
proscribes idols. Indeed, ‘the honor rendered to an image passes to its
prototype,’ and ‘whoever venerates an image venerates the person portrayed
in it.’ The honor paid to sacred images is a ‘respectful veneration,’
not the adoration due to God alone.”
Think of it this way. Anything that we put before God in our lives –
money, sports, relationships, power, material things, the list goes on and
on – has the potential to become a “god” to us, thus causing us to violate
the First Commandment.
For further study:
CCC 2084-2141